Discussion (245) ¬

Well, if Bloomingpedia is correct, they’re in Lindley Hall, so there are actually only TWO stops in a believable range (though I’m guessing at the scale1 and the active radius might actually be even smaller than that, plus idk which portals actually made it over to become Pokéstops)

*waits to be “well, actually”ed by actual IU attendees somewhere further down there↓↓↓*

I SHOULD NOTE THOUGH that GPS doesn’t guarantee accuracy of location, so it’s not only possible but HIGHLY LIKELY that Amber can track as being well the fuck over in Wylie Hall, like how in Gtown, MD I can sit in Red Robin and reach the Mini Statue of Liberty, sit in Señor Tequila and reach the racist-looking statues, or sit in Longhorn and reach BOTH OF THOSE (yet NOT the bullhead actually INSIDE the Longhorn???)…

or if they installed a Boost Mobile somewhere, it could have THREE Boost Mobile stops ON TOP OF EACH OTHER like in Lakeforest Mall… =p

Ran a BBS blackboard on a Apple ][GS hardware hacked with a Lava controller and DEC cabling system at one time …. that was a lot of 20MB HDDs ….
Just saw a 5 TB HDD for less than 200 …. man I feel old now.

Ha. Youngster. I’ve still got a half box of punch cards somewhere in storage along with an old teletype machine that was great as as an after toggleswitch boot device because it had a paper tape reader. Doesn’t work and can’t be fixed because you can’t get the tubes for it anymore.

Pft.
She doesn’t use GPS.
She upgraded her system to a hybrid GPS/Galileo system years ago and gets cm-level accuracy in most areas.
(seriously; the Galileo satellite network should really improve AR apps once phones start supporting it)

I try not to do that nitpicky “well, actually” stuff anymore, but you basically asked for it, so…

I’m not sure that any details have been established to narrow down the location of Amber and Danny’s class. If anyone knows of any strips with exterior shots, point me to them. But on a real-life level, this class could be taking place in practically any building. It’s a low-level, high-enrollment course, and those pretty much get shoved wherever they’ll fit.

Case in point–the class they’re probably taking, CSCI-A 110 Intro to Computers and Computing, is exactly that way in real life. In the fall of 2016, it occurred in a variety of locations at different hours, including Ballantine, Wylie, Morrison, Swain, Geology, Wells, and SPEA.

As for where you might be able to access 3 Pokestops, I can’t tell you that, but I do know that campus has a good number of ’em. I haven’t played much since I got back to school.

I feel like we’re seeing the alter situation getting way worse. Like, the Amber alter is so cut out that she doesn’t even feel she has a right to feel anything about the breakup cause that’s happening to like a distant roommate.

Like all of it. So Danny was dating Amazi-girl who is technically Amber but isn’t Amber, but Amber was the one that broke up with him even though she wasn’t Amber at the time? I mean, I just sort of role with it you know? But I’m not passing any quiz on this subject.

Ah, so short synopsis as best I figure is that Amber/Amazi-girl has DID or disassociative identity disorder and as such has developed two alters owing to lots of trauma and abuse. One of these alters, Amber, is quiet and unassuming and has blushing cheeks, whereas the other alter, Amazi-girl is much more active and hyperfocused.

Now, for most people with DID, integration is the goal. Having the separate alters consistently sharing memories and operating more like a committee that’s more focused on a common goal than one that is all higgly-piggly and not talking to each other. Amber/AG however is on a road of deeping disassociation, with the two trying to draw clear defined lines between them and trying to sort themselves into the toxic mess and the golden alter, which is a bad combination all around.

As such, when Danny was dating Amber/AG, Amber/AG decided to set a clear line and decided that only one alter would date Danny and when the mask was used in a sex scene, AG decided that she was the alter who was dating him and that Amber wasn’t.

Danny went along with this because he thought it was a secret identity thing rather than a worsening disassociation thing. However, this lead to later tension as the deepening disassociation led AG to become more erratic, unforgiving, and paranoid under the attempt to be the golden alter unconnected to Amber’s panic attacks from Sal.

As such, AG freaked on Danny and broke up, feeling guilty later about it but deciding Danny was better off without her. And now we’re seeing potential evidence that the Amber alter is becoming more disassociated from the relationship and AG’s life and the condition may be worsening to the point that memories are no longer being shared.

Likely because AG thinks Amber can’t handle things like her team-up with Sal owing to her PTSD triggers surrounding her.

Hopefully that helps and doesn’t just make the whole thing more confusing.

Beejesus…as in the literal bee Jesus who walks on honey and died for our pollenated sins! That’s kinda confusing but interesting than I gave it credit for. I just assumed Amazi-girl was an outlet for Amber’s rage issues and violent inclinations..What you’ve stated is far more compelling though.

The only bit I’d quibble with is the AG/Amber relationship with Danny. He started dating her as AG before knowing she was Amber, who he was also friends with. By the time the mask sex scene comes around, he knew she was Amber, but he was still officially only dating AG. The mask didn’t change things. In fact she switches personas to Amber during that sequence.

By the end of what? The relationship? Certainly – though she never really made it clear to Danny that it was a psychological thing, not a secret identity pretense thing and Danny kept pushing to openly date Amber.
The mask sex scene? She was Amber by the end of it, using the mask at the start to give herself confidence.
That’s all part of her disassociation gradually getting worse. I’m not actually sure how much it existed at the start of the comic. She seemed to be using it much more as a pretense at first.

Exactly! She could still be hurting right now, but also right now, she has Pokemon. Like, you don’t need to be constantly miserable and constantly thinking about the other person after a bad breakup. You’re allowed to be happy and think about other things.

I am actually actively excited about the next semester starting up next week because there are very few pokestops by where I live and I’ve been running on like two or three pokeballs a day for a month.
sooo

That’s what I recall reading on the official tumblr page. They’re both based on the same person Willis knows in real life, but the first one was based on the closeted Alex and this one is based on the openly trans woman Alex, but they are different characters.

That is sort of fantastic, that the male version of Alex could be said to be based off IW!Alex who was based off the closeted pre-transition person DW knew, and this Alex is based off the real person after she could throw away the pretense.

Personally I find the idea of seeing them as the same person feels like it’s doing a bit of a disservice to the difficulties of transitioning. Sadly, you can’t go to work one day pre-transition and come in the next 100% passing as a whole new person of the gender you identify as. It doesn’t work like that. It’s a long and difficult process.
I don’t want to dismiss that some people might view it that way though, or want to see it that way. I think it’s fantastic that this Alex is definitely trans, that’s pretty cool- although three transladies and no transdudes yet, clearly DW needs to stop writing about awesome ladies and start a comic all about awesome transdudes.

That is one thing I’ve noticed — that a lot of the time, trans ladies (and bi ladies, and lesbians) are more common than trans guys (and bi guys, and gay guys). There are probably a lot of reasons for that, some of them overlapping, some of them reasonable, and some of them disgusting.

But this is Willis. I’m sure he’ll be getting around to them eventually.

That too. Like, oh, what’re these terrible lesson plans I drafted when I… I mean “he” was sleep-walking through this course, well, that must be the work of a bad Alex we’ll never see again, ha ha. (okay, now to quickly fix this shit).

1. Danny, that’s a type of distorted thinking called “mind reading”. You can’t really know what Amber’s thinking. I now you’re worried about her, but you can’t live your life this way.
2. Amber, you may want to actually pay attention in class now, as Alex appears to actually be able to focus on and want to do her job now that she’s not dealing as much with her gender dysphoria. It looks like the class could very well switch from “laid back easy A” to “seriously intensive”.

Maybe. Amber was at least good friends with Danny. No way she doesn’t miss him.
Though pushing all that onto AG might be how she deals with it and furthers the disassociation – “I’m not bothered by losing Danny. He was only dating AG, not me. I don’t have to care. See how concerned I am with Pokemon.”

Also- when something bad happens, it doesn’t have to be at the forefront of your thoughts 24/7. She could honestly be broken up about the breakup as well, but rn she’s focusing on PokeGo. Even though it’s a bad breakup and she’s going through rough times, she’s allowed small reprieves.

Not completely. Maybe only programmers will end up using them, because a mouse and keyboard will always be more a more efficient setup for mashing out code. Having to use a touchscreen keyboard or needing to reach up to use a touch screen for things would be too obnoxious.

And since there’s already a tap-and-hold convention for touchscreen context menus that’s pretty ubiquitous, I doubt those will go away either. They’re even more useful on smaller screens when your fingers are the only input device.

It’s just how totally basic some college computer classes are. I took a required class on word, Excel, and access in college where the first lesson in the workbook for each was opening and saving a file. It was totally basic stuff but that was the class. Compared to that, using the right click button is practically Shakespeare in comparison

I remember that class! A friend and I from the proper computer science program signed up for it just to see what was going on over in computer information systems land. After hearing the syllabus we looked at each other, then barely managed to wait for the class session to be over before both dropping it.

I only took one other CIS class – a 400 level Visual C++ class that I signed up for to get a few easy credits. Little did I I know. I mean, yes, I had been programming professionally in that language for half a decade by then, but I thought I might at least learn a few tricks I didn’t know. But when I got there, all the other students had neglected to bother to take the prerequisite CIS basic programming class, so the teacher threw up his hands and announced that I was in a basic C class now. Suffice to say, I didn’t learn any tricks, but did get my easy credits.

I guess what I’m saying is, the Boise State University CIS program didn’t impress me much. Their Computer Science program *did* though, aside from the AI and game programming classes. Hey, there’s a few lemons in every bunch.

Ironically, that was the only class to teach me something about computers that I didn’t already know from owning a TI-85 in the mid 90s, due to Access. Mind you, I’m an accountant and not a programmer, which limits my exposure. (I do kick ass at Excel, mind you)

My mom’s phone has a weird glitch going on, where her character won’t actually follow her much anywhere. It’ll either just stand in one place for a long time while my mom is far ahead, or just start running in the opposite direction. (We think it’s because the battery might be dying, but it’s a Samsung Galaxy 6, so we can’t replace it ourselves).

Panels 1 and 2: Yeah, I could abandon my headcanon, but fuck it, I’m all in on this, especially as Word of Willis leaves the question of whether or not Alex is the same person deliberately unsettled and open to both interpretations. So, this is less, yes, this is what I suspect is 100% happening and more me going all in on my personal headcanon for Alex.

And so, my interpretation of this moment is that Alex has been checked out and bad this semester with worrying about coming out and dysphoria and so has just sort of been following a basic lesson plan based on the books or the college-recommended standards and is only now starting to actually fully process how things are going and becoming dismayed.

Like, she’s going “holy fuck, it’s almost midterms and this is the guide I’m working with, what the fuck” internally.

It might also be that she was worried about being outed or coming out before and so was hewing closer to the standards or the book and not thinking about it and now she’s out and feels more confident, she feels more empowered to critique or mock the standards set out for her to cover and make edits.

Or it could even be that Unit 6 is just bad in the recommended standards, whereas earlier units at least had something arguably of value even if it was highly basic. Like, I don’t teach at college level, but I’ve had run-ins with state standards where I’ve boggled at the stupidity of what I’m expected to cover for a class sometimes and have had to creatively interpret it to make it work.

Regardless of anything, I’m glad she’s comfortable and happy now and able to focus more on the act of teaching* now!

*And that’s something that feels very real. It’s hard to focus with extreme dysphoria and be your best self, especially when you’re knowingly in the closet. So, being able to be out and have the worst of worrying behind her is likely to free her mind to really focus on the class. Certainly I was able to retain more energy from teaching when I was out as myself than when I was teaching closeted every day and crying in despair every night.

I’m not saying that this isn’t what’s happening. Not at all. First, it meshes entirely with what little I understand about transitioning, and second, you’re far far far far more knowledgeable on the subject than I am.

But could another element at work here be that Alex is trying to head off a (anticipated) negative reaction to her transition by becoming the cool teacher? Suddenly be awesome as a bribe to get students to accept the new face? I don’t know if that would work… and I don’t even know if it’s needed with this crowd… but if Alex thinks it’s worth a shot, could that be what she’s doing here?

The previous units sounded basic but not “a child can figure this out without more than basic prompting” basic, yeah. I’m betting it was in fact entirely possible Alex read the syllabus once or twice before checking out on this, and Unit 6 just whooshed past up til this point.

By the time the class gets a professor who’s actually paying attention, the students aren’t, and won’t be able to readjust the timeblock from ‘naptime’ to ‘class’ before the semester is over.
Tragic and entirely familiar.

You’ve really grown so much and… what’s that? That’s not the last panel of the comic?

Fuck-

Panel 4: And there’s Danny’s martyrdom right on cue. And it’s much worse for him because he’s the type of person that will always find it easier to suffer through pain than to imagine he’s causing someone else distress.

Panel 5: I just want to hug him and tell him things will get better one day. Like, AG near the end did… not great things to Danny. Things that toed right up to the line of abusive at points and certainly at the least were definitely paranoid and unresponsive to Danny’s actual statements.

It’s understandable he’d have mixed feelings about everything, even that he still loves and thinks well of AG. But it sucks he’s interpreting this innocuous attempt at genuine self-care as being “the real abusive move” freaking out about this being interpreted as a passive-aggressive attack.

And it’s just sad to see because that’s so human and a feeling I’ve struggled with, especially when I was dealing with an erratic ex who did… not great things to me in the past.

And I hope this healing can continue and he stops putting himself through this much distress every time he tries to do the most healthy thing for himself.

Yeah, it’s just so sad. The whole mess around the relationship with Amber/Amazi-girl was sadly the perfect trap for him. Play to his loyalty and his romantics, swear him in to secrecy, make him responsible for his partners well-beeing… Sadly, Amber/Amazi-girl got caught in it just as much as he did. I’m just happy it ended as soon as it did, and with relatively low amount of damage – because if she had let him he would have stayed WAY too long.

I am very clear on Blaine ultimately being the one to blame (and I’m not overly fond of Danny’s parents either, even if they don’t play in the same division).

Amber/Amazi-girl is as much caught in the trap as Danny. All of them do their best for each other with the very limited tools they are given. Even the breakup was to a large part Amazi-girl trying to protect Danny.

Yeah yeah I fucking know already. Blaine caused it and now Amber’s in The Cycle of Abuse *scare chord* and is just so inherently shitty and broken she can’t be allowed to have a partner, and trying to care for her is an exercise in futility.

I actually find it kind of weird that it dropped off so much. I guess the active hunting lost its appeal after their GPS tracking program goofed and they had to remove it completely. But the game really didn’t lose much for me, who just kind of hangs out around pokestops around campus between classes and catches pokemon to give my hands something to do while watching youtube videos. (Hooray for Multi-tasking!) I don’t even really battle at Gyms, I just kind of like collecting pokemon to “catch ’em all). I actually made it a bit of a side mission during my Christmas vacation in France to get a Mr. Mime. (Finally found one at the Airport waiting for my flight back, after I’d nearly given up hope. I named him Pierrot.)

And you bet your sweet ass I’d take advantage of that kind of seat during some big boring lecture on a subject I already knew. (I suppose I’m lucky in that regard that I haven’t taken a class that felt that pointless since the game came out, but you better believe I would have done it during some of my freshman lectures.)

There are two Pokestops in range of my office, so I’ve also not stopped playing. Sometimes, I need to do something physical to wake myself up, and a five-minute stroll usually does the trick, so I’ll play then, as well. It’s still fun for me.

And I like to pretend I’m Clayton Kershaw, dropping in knee-buckling curveballs when I’m catching.

Panel 6: Okay, I’m getting really worried about Amber/AG’s DID, because I think the alters might be getting really close to full disassociation and cessation of communication or sharing of memories, which would suck for her.

Especially so, because well, integration is hard. I’ve been lucky that I’ve always been fairly integrated more or less, but I’ve known people who haven’t been as lucky and it’s hard to get folks who are not talking or even fully know of the other’s existence to really work together and communicate. And I know from the bad road of trying to force 3-dimensional alters into boxes of “golden alter allowed all the good things” and “toxic mess allowed all the abuse” and having to recover from that mistake.

Like, Amber has been acting weird a lot since the breakup and I’m getting a strong feeling that AG has decided that the full details of certain memories are being classified because “Amber wouldn’t be able to handle it” and that Amber is only getting bits and pieces and a strong feeling that it’s not her place to really have much in the way of strong feelings about the breakup or any say.

I dunno, I might be over-reading into her actions, but I’m definitely full of the concern.

Yeah, that’s also super worrying. The way that Amber just follows AG’s lead and assumes she knows best about everything when AG’s recent actions were super erratic and not all positive and even AG realized that elements of it deserved scrutiny and apology.

Am I crazy for still resenting Alex being happy for doing something I am too damn neurotic to do myself? Probably, especially since I am talking about the fictional Alex, rather than the real-life person she’s based on, which is… ugh, I hate myself.

To be honest, I felt that way for about 15 years myself. It took me a long time (and a particularly eye-opening encounter) to finally decide to go ahead with socially and medically transitioning. But no matter where we all are in our path, it doesn’t invalidate who we are. 💙

“Oh, no and by doing it without thinking of it, and then thinking of it and not moving, I’m a DOUBLE ASSHOLE. But if I move now when I have already sat down here I suppose I’m some kind of TRIPPLE ASSHOLE. But if I don’t move…”

And so go Danny’s thoughts on and on, creatively thinking up new ways to drag himself in the dirt.

I did once have a professor who wasn’t trans, but who did occasionally don an alternate identity in class. On days when we had presentations he would claim a friend of his who worked in the industry was in town and he was going to critique us. He’d go out to get his “friend,” and come back wearing sunglasses ad a Hawaiian shirt and he would completely refuse to break character for any reason. He did this multiple times.

As a first year Computer Science major, I had not one, not two, not three, but FOUR classes where the day one lecture consisted entirely of the definition of a computer. Alex’s curriculum is sadly accurate.

1: She has been listening in the past. At the very least, she’s certainly picked up what the homework assignments have been, and then finished hers before anyone else.

2: For all Alex knows, she is taking notes. It’s not exactly unheard of in a computer class to take notes on something digital.

3: Or, if we’re going with the assumption that this is the same Alex as always, then Alex is, right now, probably thinking that -everyone- is playing Pokemon Go on their phones. And she’s not blaming them.

Of course, only Amber is.

The rest is playing Super Mario Run.

4: Heck, even if this isn’t the same Alex, she’s probably still assuming that nobody’s paying attention because of how shockingly basic this is. And not blaming them.

Trufax: The Intro to Computer Science course I took thinking it’d be a nice CS elective when I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to do ChemistryPhysics dual major or Physics CS was one that I dropped after getting the syllabus, which had such thrilling topics as:

How to set up and power on a computer (this was supposed to take a week, and had a lab for it)
How to use the command line in DOS (FYI: DOS had been phased out of development seven years prior) – three weeks
What is a Graphical User Interface? – one week
How to use a Graphical User Interface – two weeks
How to set up a mouse and keyboard – one week
How to use the keyboard – one week
How to use the mouse – one week

Thus you’d be at midterms, and literally only learned how to turn it on and putz around in Windows a bit. I am one of those weirdos whose odds of flunking a course actually go up below a certain minimum difficulty level (I need a challenge to stay interested, I need to stay interested to do the thing), so I dropped it and decided to focus on physics instead.

(spoiler: I didn’t end up doing physics at all in undergrad because field theory broke my brain in first year because the way my brain understands fields I needed the differential calculus to be able to math it and I couldn’t wrap my head around the simplified version taught in first & second year. So I wound up in medicinal chemistry instead… except now I’m doing thermochemistry which is essentially the intersection of classical physics and chemistry so I wound up taking a long and windy route to where I wanted to go in the first place. :P)

And I am informed by a younger person I know that as of two years ago, the course was still there, still with the exact same syllabus.

Also other ways in which I am weird: Very often, for me, the “more difficult” way to do something will be easier to my brain. Thus I derived calculus when first learning about limits because finding the limit of a continuous function is just utter bullshit and calculus makes more sense. Or, in this case: I couldn’t understand fields until I had multivariable and differential calculus under my belt, and therefore knew how to handle gradients in math. Because the simplified one dimensional version they taught made no goddamn sense to me. Once I learned advanced calculus, it was easy, though. In real time conversation, I also tend to reduce pretty much everything to a math analogy, which annoys the hell out of a lot of non-mathy people I know. “Listen, the set of cops who are racists is not equivalent to the null set, alright?!” Is a thing I’ve actually said before. To someone who knows fuck all about set theory. Because my brain goes to math before it goes anywhere else.

I, quite understandably, got a “What the fuck are you talking about?” in response.

(this is why I love Dina and hope she never changes. Because people who make those bizarre hyper-academic analogies and word choices exist, and when I am in day-to-day conversation and not purposefully self-editing to come off more chatty and conversational so I don’t come off like I’m trying to be cognitively inaccessible to a large portion of the population to be a condescending fucker, I’m one of them. I edit myself a lot in textposts because if I write how I normally speak, only fellow mathy folks understand me and everyone else thinks I’m trying to make myself feel smart by talking over their heads.

If I ever use one of those out-in-left-field mathy or sciency analogies, one got through my editing net. I’m not trying to be a condescending jerk. Just FYI.)

Also: I don’t edit myself in real-time conversation because I don’t have time to. Pulling together a text post here? I spent 15 minutes on the post made at 7:05 editing and re-editing it.

This is why I – and many other autistic people I know – prefer text-based communication. I don’t have to worry about real-time responses or body language, and I can take the time I need to make sure I’m understood by as many people as possible. 🙂

SET THEORY IS A GIFT AND A BLESSING FOR PUTTING INTO WORDS WHAT YOU ARE THINKING AND PEOPLE WHO DON’T KNOW STATISTICS THERMINOLOGY ARE AWKWARD AND PAINFUL TO TALK TO
(jk im trying to self edit out of that too)

I think that the warning was in the title: “Introduction to Computer Science”. ‘Introduction’ is always a synonym for ‘So, you primitives have crawled out from under your rock and want to know what these ‘computer’ things are?

Full Disclosure: FWIW, I was one of those primitives who had never used a modern personal computer before I took an ‘Introduction to Business Computing’ course, so I really did need to know how to use Windows and a Mouse.

I’m also one of those weirdos who can and will fail anything labeled “an easy A”, while doing fine as long as the class average is a C. I just hate busywork, or anything that I think is busywork, so I avoid it and fail.

Also, I relate to thinking of the mathy/sciencey analogies before thinking of the normal English way of saying something. Luckily, I’m at an engineering school and I usually get reactions like “what?” followed by “hey, that’s an accurate way of putting it”. My friends have started calling me a cyborg from the amount of times I use computer terminology to refer to my brain. (Even though memory retrieval is both a psychology and a computer term, and my brain could theoretically have segfault errors.)

I call B.S. on three overlapping spots indoors. That or my phone is really crappy and can’t get GPS signal indoors. For a Pokestop to exist, there needs to be an location of note near by. To have 3 accessible they’d each have to be like within 50 feet of where she’s sitting. I just don’t see that happening.

You know, I was thinking that if you’ve read ‘Men are from Mars, Women from Venus’ that Danny is more Venusian than Martian, and Amber more Martian than Venusian. It never occurred to me that a nervous disposition could be linked to liking cock, what with myself being a nervous lesbian. I learn more about other people’s stereotypes every day.

Panel One: Ah yes. Because ‘this Alex’ has never ever seen the curriculum. Yes. Definitely. Of course. This doesn’t read like a ‘where was I’ at all to me. Nope. And awwwww, Alex is SO CUTE. She is so happy to be transitioning and I love it.

Panel Two: Oh god, Alex. Yeah, that sounds about right. A lot of intro to computer classes work under the assumption that someone has never used a computer before – and to be fair, it is possible, even today. Immigrants,international students, or even people from, say, an Amish community or something may not have used a computer before. It’s unlikely today, but not impossible. That said, I would think that that would be either a remedial class or that there would be an alternative for kids who know this already.

And yeah, it doesn’t shock me that Alex is surprised. She was not paying attention during her work beforehand. Probably distracted by dysphoria or finding resources to transition. Or she really was playing Words With Friends. Either way, she’s now being more attentive – and having her ‘Dear God, what have I been teaching?’ moment. Poor girl. Though it’s a realization more teachers could stand to have – Jason, Penny, Alan, looking at you three. Leslie’s realized her mistake a couple times, now Alex. Math department next please!

Panel Three: Good job, Danny! I like seeing him prioritize his needs. He desperately needs to figure out what is best for Danny, without worrying over everyone else 24/7. It’s one thing to care for others, especially when they’re in a bad spot, and it’s another to drop your own needs entirely.

Panel Four: GOD DAMMIT, DANNY. NO. BAD DANNY. Don’t go down that road. Beating yourself up is dangerous. Second guessing every single thought and action as being horrible and awful and people seeing something in the worst possible light is something I struggle with a lot. It’s not a fun thing. But at the same time, classes fill up. The other side of the room isn’t really an option. It really sucks when you know someone is mad and don’t know if something or other will be taken the wrong way.

Panel Five: Yup, everything is terrible and awful and of course everyone must SEE how terrible and awful you are and oh great, you’re a piece of shit and it’s an effort not to have your whole day shot and withdraw from everything. It is painful and I really hope Danny can stop panicking.

Panel Six: And yeah, usually it isn’t true. Much like with Dorothy, the ‘flaws’ and ‘bad things’ are things nobody else actually sees or would consider a big deal. Things you’re raking yourself over the coals for are not actual big problems.

I’m glad to see Amber isn’t worrying too much over Danny. We know she saw him, and we know she’s hurting over their break up, and we know she cares about him. But she’s not fixating on him. She’s thinking about other things. That’s good. And seeing her just gaming before class like normal makes me happy. She’s not responsible for Danny worrying – at least, not on purpose. She’s happily doing her thing. That’s good. I hope Danny can get to that point soon himself, where he can see her and not worry about how his every move will affect her.

That’s because Willis is an evil mastermind sitting in his secret volcano lair, in front of a set of a hundred TV sets that keeps showing him the lives of people he keeps track of for one reason or another.

On the flip side you have the computer into course for non computer science majors that assumes to much prior knowledge. I tried a middle aged woman for a few weeks and 99% of her problems were due to the fact that the book skipped steps in their instructions. This was a smart woman. She understood the material she had, she just needed the missing info.

I was appalled because this sort of thing makes non-tech savvy people feel dumb and like technology is this thing that’s out of reach for them. I had to keep telling her that the textbook was bad.

I’ve never been in Danny’s situation but that is definitely how is react to it.